My Own Very Limited Investigation of 9/11

Another member of a listserv I belong to (on which arguments regarding what caused the Twin Towers to fall, burst into flame at irregular but frequent intervals) challenged the rest of us to read David Ray Griffins Debunking 9/11 Debunking.

To some extent I've taken up his challenge, concentrating on Chapter Three which addresses the collapse of the WTC 1, 2, and 7, because unless there is sufficient evidence (definite proof seems impossible at this late date) that the buildings were the victims of 'controlled demolitions' all the rest of his book about the timing of movements of Bush and his staff and colleagues, the non-scrambling of jets, and general and specific question of the 9/11 Commissions' report, is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.

In my estimation, Bush et al were demonstrably capable of making evil use of 9/11 to further their plans, already in progress, to invade Iraq; so far, I find it extremely difficult to believe they engineered 9/11 as a 'false flag' incident.

I'm undertaking this investigation because I'm curious and combative. As well as various debunking sites, I've read a lot of the stuff produced by various 9/11 'truth' proponents. I find it consists primarily of rhetorical questions, and tiny snippets lifted out of context to support their contentions.

For example, Griffin snips a quote from a paper by MIT professor, Thomas Eager, who has a long career as a metallurgical expert, and Christopher Musso, a graduate research student at the time, "Why did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering and Speculation"[1] that ". . . the number of columns lost on initial impact was not large and the loads were shifted to remaining columns in this highly redundant structure." thus apparently supporting Griffin's claim that the planes could not have caused the towers and Building 7 to collapse.

I checked the reference [2] and found that while Eagar and Musso did indeed state that, "While the aircraft impact undoubtedly destroyed several columns in the WTC perimeter wall, the number of columns lost on the initial impact was not large and the loads were shifted to remaining columns in this highly redundant structure," they then went on to write, in the very next sentence, "Of equal or even greater significance during this initial impact was the explosion when 90,000 L gallons of jet fuel, comprising nearly 1/3 of the aircraft's weight, ignited. The ensuing fire was clearly the principal cause of the collapse." Eagar and Musso's conclusion is clearly quite opposite to what Griffin purports .

If I'm still interested, I intend to post one or two other points re 9/11 at a future date, but at the moment, the impending federal election, has turned my mind to Stephen Harper, and how best to demonstrate that he is a man who cannot be trusted with even a minority government, let alone given the near-dictatorial powers of a majority.

[1] Published in JOM: Journal of the Minerals, Metals,& Materials Society, in 2001,

[2] http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html